


In Memoriam W.S.S.H.

by thewaitwasworthitlove



Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-12
Updated: 2016-04-12
Packaged: 2018-06-01 21:57:43
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 768
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6537754
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thewaitwasworthitlove/pseuds/thewaitwasworthitlove
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Might I not say? `Yet even here,<br/>But for one hour, O Love, I strive<br/>To keep so sweet a thing alive:'<br/>But I should turn mine ears and hear</p><p>The moanings of the homeless sea,<br/>The sound of streams that swift or slow<br/>Draw down Æonian hills, and sow<br/>The dust of continents to be;</p><p>And Love would answer with a sigh,<br/>`The sound of that forgetful shore<br/>Will change my sweetness more and more,<br/>Half-dead to know that I shall die.'" - Tennyson, 1849.</p>
            </blockquote>





	In Memoriam W.S.S.H.

J.W. - 

It’s all a lie. When they smile sadly and say “It’s better to have loved and lost than to have never loved at all.” Along with being terribly, tremendously trite. It’s, worse, a horrid, wretched lie. When you’ve loved someone this much, and he’s dead, there is nothing worse— the absence of the emotions clawing themselves from your throat would be respite, a dream. There is no amount of radiant memory to replace the cold sludge of my blood now. And, I am so frigidly cold. Some would say I’ve always been, but it has become a splintered, twisted thing in your absence. I think of you in your chair, sunlight streaming through Mrs. Hudson’s lace curtains. The silver and gold of your hair flash in the light, leaving it both shining and burnished in the late day sun. It should be a comfortable memory, everything suffused with the heat of June. It should be, but it is not. It does nothing to warm me. 

Scientifically, there is no such thing as cold, merely the absence of heat. I am near dead with the absence of your skin pressed against mine, your breath soured with sleep at my neck. 

At times, even that was not enough. When all our flesh was bared, (yours honeyed, marked with tan lines of an Afghan sun that no more wanted to leave you than the rest of Afghanistan, and mine a sickly pale only you deigned to praise), I would find you amongst the blankets and the pillows. You would nestle into me, and still it was not enough. There were thousands of atoms between the surface of my skin and yours—oil, sweat, salt, microscopic grime, bacteria, hair--all of it constantly working to keep your body healthy, all of it working to keep us sealed from one another. I could feel the pressure, firm and guiding, sometimes possessive and bruising, against the skin of my bony hips or between the spread of my thighs, but it was infuriating to have that skin so close and still not there rubbing raw against my own. 

It feels hollow, this thing, this body I’d never had need to notice before you. You arrived, and you fed me up like I’d teased you about. It was a poor decision. I’ve never had good impulse control. So I glutted myself, filled my body near bursting with as much of you as I could. You forced me to eat, to sleep, to rest, which was the newest addition. You taught me the blissful art of rest. We’d run around London, twin streaks of light, creating, destroying, discovering in turns, and on the seventh day, or twelfth day or twentieth day, we rested. You would feed me, sometimes bathe me, tenderly tend to wounded flesh. You would drag me to bed and unravel me, the whole of me, in your hands, your mouth, around your fingers, your cock—sometimes the unraveling felt like silk, a gentle tug a few murmured words was all it took to remind me that I was yours, and that you demanded I rest. Other times, it took fierce couplings, gnashing teeth, pounding, driving hips and that sharp look you’d get around your eyes until I submitted, brain quiet in the wake of the force of your love.

I am worse for having loved you and lost you. That was not to be the way of things, John. There was very decidedly a way these things should go. Me first, you--gracious, strong willed, stubborn you--treading softly behind, as was your way. I am the weaker one. I have always been weak. And, the weight of bearing a love meant for two by myself is impossible. You would have done it, bore it better than Atlas, but I have never been you. You were hard, tempered steel—Dull sheened and deadly useful. I am and have always been glass, and I cannot carry it anymore. I do not wish to. 

It is not better to have loved and lost. Neither is it better to have never loved at all. Best, very best, are those moments of frantic desperation when glass eyes meet steel blue. There is a bomb studded vest, a pleading look, a terse nod. All is said in a moment, all bursts into flame, and two lovers slip hands in their first holy palmer’s kiss and step off the edge together, skin finally touching skin. 

Instead I am left here to malinger, bearing barely the impossible--the improbability of you. 

Always, always, the whole of me,

S.H.


End file.
